Spring of Fukushima, as a Storyteller – A letter to Three
Art Critic　Aomi Okabe

It was in the afternoon on March 11, still in the very cold winter. Two winters have come and gone since then, and the spring is about to come again. For Fukushima, however, it is just the beginning of a long road towards decommissioning of the nuclear reactor which could take as long as 40 years. As I feel thankful for the honor of witnessing this exhibit, Three, in Tokyo, I would like to share the excerpt from “The Reality Demands” by Wislawa Szymborska from “The End and The Beginning” (Publisher Michitani, 1997, translation by Mitsuyoshi Numano), which I read in those difficult days.

Reality demands
we also state the following:
life goes on.
It does so near Cannae and Borodino,
at Kosovo Polje and Guernica *snip*

Where Hiroshima had been,
Hiroshima is again
manufacturing products
for everyday use.*snip*
On the tragic mountain passes
the wind blows hats off heads
and we cannot help––
but laugh

The female poet in Poland kept writing ironical yet poetic manifestos vis-à-vis totalitarianism, without yielding to despair, even in the midst of the tragedy of recurring wars after the socialism system failed, and she won the Nobel Prize.

All the places that appear in this poem were killing fields. Immediately after March 11, my friends in France sent me e-mails worrying about me even though I was in Tokyo. I remembered writing back to them saying, “Right now, Japan is like a killing field.” But, it was a killing field for what?

The trust I had in my own country and home that I believed in collapsed like a house of cards and all I could do was to stand in the desolate devastation and bawl my eyes out. You have no idea how much that sense of misery was consoled by Szymborska’s poems.
All of you from Fukushima, still in your 20’s, decided to choose the path of staying in your hometown and continuing to produce. Maybe that is because the reality and art “demanded” it, so that you can continue your battle of talking to individuals, stubbornly yet quietly, without getting carried away by some heroism, just like how Szymborska did.

I was in Paris when the cataclysmic catastrophe happened in Chernobyl in May of 1986, which spread ashes of dead across borders. Little did I know that three of you were born around that time, giving cute little first cries, in Fukushima. Right after the disaster in Chernobyl, Fukushima Prefecture issued an extra edition of “Atom Fukushima,” claiming that its plant would never have a catastrophe where radiation would diffuse even in the unlikely event of accidents or earthquakes because there is a multitude of protective/safety systems, including the nuclear reactor buildings. Even back then, however, people were whispering that if steam explosions or hydrogen explosions happened, everything would be blown away and the core could be damaged and even nuclear meltdown could possibly happen. Paul Virilio, a French philosopher known for being a thinker of “velocity,” predictively delineated the cruel modern world in which development of technologies and machinery is destined to cause new accidents in The Suicide State” (NTT Publishing Co., Ltd., 2003, translation by Masaru Aoyama and Kentaro Taga), which he wrote after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001

The theme of the new work this time by Three is a nuclear reactor building. A simple cube having a size greater than 3 meters, made to a same proportion of the real nuclear reactor building on the ground, has its surface covered with 151,503 small soy sauce droppers that are filled with colorful colored water, and this number corresponds to the number of the evacuees inside and outside of Fukushima Prefecture. Of them, 30% of the droppers are filled with black and murky water. Three explained to me that 30% is the ratio of the damage on the #3 reactor, which exploded exactly 2 years ago from March 14, the day this exhibit will open, and it symbolizes the threat and effect on human bodies. This monument of wrath and sadness that towers over us as a grave marker of oppression also represents the dignity of those overwhelming number of people who live while thinking about the days that will never come back, or so it seems to me.

The other one is similar to the installation displayed for the first time at Shiseido art egg last year, which was a screen made of empty soy sauce droppers on which images were projected. This time, they used both sides of the object to project images of Tokyo on one side and the images of Iitate Village, which is close from Fukushima City where the members of three live, known for having been designated the region containing the zone that has been declared safe for short visits, one that still requires decontamination work and the one which will remain a no-go zone for many years. These images were taken at the same hour on the same day of the year.

Several locations that allow us to compare Tokyo and Fukushima, such as “a fresh produce area in a super market,” “convenience store,” “busy street,” and a “playground” were selected, and activities of a crowd of people or individuals let the datarized hue come and go on the empty soy sauce droppers. Those who come see it cannot look at the both sides simultaneously. Despite the fact that it is mediated by countless transparent films called information, those who are situated on the other side of geopolitical position simply drift around in the ocean of invisibility, and their eyes will never intersect with the eye on the side because of the asymmetry. Maybe that is what it represents: the heartless reality.
Many brave artists have visited the disaster area from all over the country and engaged in interesting projects. You, on the other hand, sharply cut into the multifaceted and complicated reality of Fukushima and sanctify it under the threat of the radiation that can jeopardize your lives and continue to pursue the possibility of art through your own activity. Not for the sake of some kid-glove redemption or prayer or ethical pursuit in the form of words but only for the sake of your sound vow to you rawareness to patiently respond to the “demand.” And there oozes out the unspoken heaviness. I would like to give a big hand from the bottom of my heart to your resolution to pass on stories of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Fukushima that seem to fade away every day and conclude this letter with the words of Szymborska:

It is better to be jocular for writing poetry
than not being jocular for not writing poetry.

Please always be poetic storytellers rich with satire and a critical spirit without forgetting your usual laugher and sense of humor.

With love,

Aomi Okabe, in Tokyo, on March 1, 2013